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Getting all crossed up
Posted: Wednesday May 03, 2000 01:15 PM
Sports Illustrated senior writer Gary Van Sickle will answer your questions every Thursday during the golf season. Click here to send him a question. Crosshanded putting, like the long putter, had come a long ways. After years of being viewed as a warning sign that the user couldn't roll a pea through a barn door, crosshanded putting finally gained credibility and respectability in the 1990s, thanks to the likes of Tom Kite, Jim Furyk and others. Then Craig Stadler and Robert Allenby, both crossers, set the putting style back a decade with their display during the Shell Houston Open playoff last weekend. However, Stadler did do his part to boost the visibility of polo when he batted his ball off the green after missing a putt to tie Allenby on the final playoff hole. I think they were in the fourth chukker at the time. We've all been there, Walrus, and done that. Like you, we always repair our divots on the green. It's the only respectful way to play the game. As for the woeful putting, every golfer knows what it's like to stand over a ball and tap it and know you're not going to make it. Much like asking a cheerleader out on a date. Crosshanded will go on. Actually, I putted crosshanded until I was about 25, when I had such an awful summer that I finally gave up, got rid of my Marty Furgol signature putter, bought a Ping, putted conventionally in my studio apartment all winter and never looked back. Twenty years later, I'm putting crummy again and thinking about going crosshanded out of desperation. But after watching Stadler, hey, maybe I'll give this conventional grip a few more rounds. If that doesn't work, I'll try leeches. This week's mail:
How good can Robert Allenby be? Can he win a major? Until some injuries slowed him down, he was picked as Australia's next Greg Norman. Well, if he's the next Norman, I guess he could get beat in a playoff in a major, maybe win one or two British Opens. Seriously, Allenby and his crosshanded putting stroke look a bit dicey. I don't see him bringing Augusta National to its knees with that stroke. However, it is difficult to evaluate Allenby. He was a promising player before the car accident in 1996 in which he suffered a fractured sternum. I don't have any idea how that's going to affect his career in the long run. The ordeal could have made him stronger, more patient and hungrier. Will that outweigh the physical side effects of the wreck? In a word ... I have no idea.
If the pros played on standard public courses the rest of us do, what would their handicaps be? Using the PGA Tour's scoring-average stat, Vijay Singh at 70.00 is a minus-2 and Tiger Woods at 68.40 is about minus-3.6. Tim, Vijay and Tiger want a game with you based on those handicaps, including double presses, automatic one-downs, the works. They shoot their scores from the tips on courses set up to be much more difficult than the average course. Tiger and Vijay are more like minus-6. The pros can easily shoot 64 on the courses we play, assuming the greens are halfway decent. They can almost certainly reach all the par-5s in two, reducing the par to 68, and they'll hit sand wedges into a lot of the par-4s, a club they're deadly with. As a minus-2, Vijay will beat you like a drum.
Has there been any backlash about Stephen Ames's trashing of Tiger a few weeks back? Not really, Matt. Now we realize Ames, who screwed up his career when he got caught lying to customs officials, is even dumber than we first thought.
Why do pro players get to wear regular spikes when every country club I know of will not allow their members or guests to wear them? Are the soft things we are forced to wear inferior to the old spikes? Have you never worn real metal spikes? Wow. Nothing beats them for traction this side of baseball cleats, which that jerk greenskeeper always complained about when I wore them on the golf course. There's such an emphasis on power and length off the tee, many pros have geared their swing to maximum strength. They're afraid if they wear soft spikes -- which more than half of the Tour pros already use -- they'll fall on their wallets and wind up on the Hooters Tour.
A proposed exhibition between Karrie Webb and Tiger Woods would be an interesting match in which to pick a world champion. Equalizing the difference is the problem. I suggest Karrie get a handicap playing from the men's tees. What do you think would be a fair way? Any real golf match is straight up, no strokes, from the same tees. What could be fairer than that? Maybe they should play the match at a Pirates' Cove miniature-golf track. Personally, I'd like to see them navigate the waterfall and the swinging log ... if they have the guts to try.
This is just a theory. Corey Pavin, Craig Stadler and Peter Jacobsen all have one thing in common, besides the fact that their A games are far behind them. They all had cameo appearances in the movie Tin Cup. None of these pros has won a tournament since. I think the celebrity thing was too much for them. They're also all over 40, Donny, an age by which time they've already got millions socked away, business deals on the side, less incentive to work on their games and usually a decreasingly effective putter. You never know. Maybe Jacobsen really will win the U.S. Open this year. His AT&T victory a few years back was one of the best ballstriking weeks in Tour history. Of course, he'll have to qualify first.
I saw Lori Van Sickle teaching Katie Couric to swing a club on TV. Is this your wife? No. Despite her continued pleas, I never married Katie Couric.
Click here to send your golf question to Gary Van Sickle.
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